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Editors Note: Just a reminder to people that this article, Help! My Heart is Full of Pony is a once a week article that talks about the love and tolerance aspect of the community. Indeed not everyone within the community follows said ideals, so if love and tolerance ain’t your thing, kindly skip over. If you’re going to read and argue points, keep it civil. And the views shared by this editorial are not always the views shared by everyone under the DHN banner, as we don’t represent any sides of the community. Thank you.

– DerpySquad

Full editorial after the page break.

A lot of people say this fandom is going to Heck in a Hoofbasket, that Love and Tolerance doesn’t mean anything to people anymore. I can’t count the number of complaints I’ve heard about the behavior of “popular” or “powerful” bronies who have lost their way, (or who were on the wrong path to begin with)—people who aren’t in it for the love of My Little Pony at all, but rather, the love of themselves. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen gossip about the behavior of these and other bronies cited as irrefutable evidence of the supposed downward spiral of our entire fandom.

Nonsense.

Everyday I see tremendous acts of kindness, friendship, and charity going on in the brony community. People helping each other when they’re down, people giving like crazy for noble causes, people sharing stories about how the show peeled the scales from their eyes and made them see the true value of friendship, the power of hope, and the nobility of kindness. Those are the bronies I see, and not a day goes by when you guys don’t bring a smile to my heart.

The fandom isn’t a hoof full of people running popular websites, organizing conventions, or making popular music.

The fandom is you.

Let those who are power hungry play their little games. Let those who only want attention have their 15 minutes. None of that really matters.

If you ever get the feeling that some bad apples are poisoning your cider, and you start to think ill of the whole batch, do yourself a favor and stop. Try to remember what does matter. Think back. Once upon a time you decided to give My Little Pony a chance, (for whatever reason). You saw those candy colored horses learning lessons about friendship, and it touched something in you. It made you smile.

Nopony can take that away from you.

If you don’t like the direction the fandom is heading, speak up rather than bemoan its fate. If you see somepony being mean to somepony else, say something! Tell them that it’s not cool for us to tear each other down. After all, if you don’t speak up, who will? The fandom isn’t some puppet on a string controlled by those in charge of the most popular online brony hangouts. You are the lifeblood of the community. Act like it. Be proud.

All that was beautiful about the fandom a year and a half ago is not gone, (though occasionally, it may be overshadowed by drama and the ambitions of those who seek to exploit the popularity of the show). It’s still strong amongst the people in the fandom who take this friendship stuff seriously, (and believe me, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of us). The simple fact that you and others like you care about the direction the fandom is heading in—the fact you want us to be the best bronies we can be—that’s proof alone that we are strong.

However, if as the years go by and the fandom swells, the day really does come when the bronysphere is an all around sour place, it’s up to you to keep the light of “what we once were” alive. To remember. To pass it on. If you do that, then it no longer becomes a story of “what we once were,” but rather a message of “what we continue to be”, and a hope for “what we strive to be.”

Don’t be shy about doing your part. Be a voice of hope and of optimism in the community. You don’t have to be a power player in the brony world, or even be good with words to make that voice heard. You just have to be kind. And friendshipy. If you look back to the now highly mythologized “glory days” of the early fandom, you’ll see that that’s what made us great to begin with – kindness and friendship.

So even if all you have to contribute is the equivalent of a mere 2.5 Wing Power, do it, and do it with all your heart.

Honestly, I love what you’re doing here, and I wish I could share your optimism. But after Derpygate (has it really been 10 months already?), there’s no way to convince me that the majority of the fandom believes in “love and tolerate”. There’s still lots of great people in the fandom, and I try to keep in touch with them, but I’ve lost the desire to interact with the community at large.

Anonymous

The fandom is coming to the same place every other fandom comes to.

Pop culture is still a culture, and it has the same problems all cultures do. Fundamentalism, militant hostility to progress, paranoia about cultural purity, etc etc. Like I mentioned in another comment, the same thing happened with Buffy the Vampire Slayer around season 5 or 6, when Marti Noxon took over as showrunner. Batman fandom is another breeding ground for this putrifying crypto-fascism that is crapping up the internet community.

Anonymous

I should add that, of course, this is a minority of MLP’s fans. The problem is that they’re imposing themselves over the entire fandom, and fancy themselves gatekeepers and spokespeople of it, and naturally the voices of those who feel threatened will be the loudest.

Present Perfect

The only thing really wrong with the fandom is that group dedicated to taking down any and all porn tumblrs. Of course, they can’t do much outside of tumblr and their tactics can be undone, but kind of annoying and sad.

Anonymous

A year and a half ago the fandom was at its absolute worst, completely overrun by /b/tards and bent on spreading “the new internet meme”. If that’s your idea of the golden days, no wonder you think it’s not that bad – if anything, the fandom actually improved since then.

Zaehlas

Maybe I am the type of person that always sees the best in people. Maybe everyone calls me nieve because of it. Regardless, I joined the fandom prior to season two, and although I’ve seen a tiny bit of “showboating” and “power hungry” people that are trying to represent the bronies, for me, that has always been overshadowed by the kindness and generosity the fandom has shown. I see it EVERY DAY. The meetups I have been able to attend, including BronyCon back in June were literally awe-inspiring.

I choose to not let the bad parts of any group represent who i am in that group, nor let the group itself sour me of the experience. Regardless of how anything proceeds, I shall always be proud to be a Brony. I will spread my kindness where and how I can, even if I am in a place where to publicly call myself a Brony would be to have myself ostracized completely. That doesn’t matter to me.

Something I read recently opened my eyes to a kind of alternate definition of selfishness. To put in another way, when I make someone’s day easier, when I put a smile on someone’s face, when I spread a little joy or tolerance into another group of people, it makes ME happy. It makes ME feel like I’m a better person. So, I’m being selfish by making myself happier.

I say to anyone else that feels this way, be selfish, and spread kindness, generosity, honesty, loyalty, laughter and friendship however you can, as long as you are helping yourself while doing it.